Nathalie Normandeau, from humble beginnings to powerful politician

Marian Scott, THE GAZETTE06.16.2014

Nathalie Normandeau, former deputy premier of Quebec as a member of the Quebec Liberal Party testifies at the Charbonneau Commission in Montreal, on Wednesday, June 18, 2014.Paul Chiasson
/ Presse Canadienne

Nathalie Normandeau, former deputy premier of Quebec as a member of the Quebec Liberal Party leaves the Charbonneau Commission in Montreal, on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 as her chief of staff between 2003 and 2011, Bruno Lortie was testifying.John Kenney
/ The Gazette

Nathalie Normandeau, former deputy premier of Quebec as a member of the Quebec Liberal Party waits for the arrival of an elevator after she’d left the Charbonneau Commission in Montreal, on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 as her chief of staff between 2003 and 2011, Bruno Lortie was testifying.John Kenney
/ The Gazette

Nathalie Normandeau, former deputy premier of Quebec as a member of the Quebec Liberal Party leaves the Charbonneau Commission in Montreal, on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 as her chief of staff between 2003 and 2011, Bruno Lortie was testifying.John Kenney
/ The Gazette

Former deputy premier of Quebec as a member of the Quebec Liberal Nathalie Normandeau leaves the Charbonneau Commission in Montreal, on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 as her chief of staff between 2003 and 2011, Bruno Lortie was testifying.John Kenney
/ The Gazette

MONTREAL - Former Quebec cabinet minister Nathalie Normandeau, who is on the stand at the Charbonneau Commission, is probably best remembered for accepting 40 long-stemmed roses and Céline Dion tickets from now-disgraced construction boss Lino Zambito in 2008.

But in her native Gaspé region, Normandeau’s name still evokes pride in the small-town girl who rose from modest origins to become one of Quebec’s most powerful politicians.

Once touted as a possible successor to former premier Jean Charest, she has lived under a cloud since her sudden resignation as deputy premier and minister of natural resources in September 2011.

Appearing before the Charbonneau Commission, Normandeau, 46, is answering questions about alleged illegal campaign fundraising by engineering and construction companies to which she awarded lucrative contracts as municipal affairs minister from 2005 to 2009. The allegations go to the heart of the corruption scandal swirling around the former Charest government and the testimony that emerges in the coming days could have far-reaching consequences, not least for Normandeau herself.

But in the Baie des Chaleurs region, where Normandeau was a popular member of the National Assembly for 13 years, many insist that whatever dirty dealing might have gone on in political backrooms, it’s inconceivable that she was a knowing participant.

“If you say the name of Nathalie Normandeau anywhere in the Gaspé, people are really fond of her,” said Gilbert Leblanc, town manager of Normandeau’s hometown of Maria, a village of 2,500, 810 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

“She has a very good reputation here, despite the fact that she has been getting bad press in Montreal and Quebec City. But here, she still has people’s confidence,” he said.

Leblanc said there is “a bit of exaggeration” in allegations implicating Normandeau.

“People are being lynched in the public square before they’ve even had the chance to give their version of the facts,” he said.

The eldest of five children born to a handyman and a housewife, Normandeau is still remembered by some local residents wearing a hard hat and safety vest while working at a summer job as a flagwoman on a road-repair crew.

Tall and mature for her age, she was an excellent student, recalled Yvon Arsenault, a retired teacher at the regional high school in nearby Carleton who taught Normandeau French in Secondary I.

The quiet, reserved Normandeau sat in the back of the class and listened intently but rarely spoke up, he said.

“It has always surprised me, because of her low profile, that she would one day end up in front of the cameras, answering questions,” he said.

“Whatever happens to her, I wish her good luck because I’m sure nobody is giving her a break these days,” said Arseneault, who takes great pride in Normandeau’s elegant French. “I loved to hear her speak,” he said. “I say of her, ‘You are our pride, not just in the Gaspé but at the national level.’ ”

Arsenault suggested Normandeau was duped by dishonest people on her staff.

“I’ve always thought of Nathalie Normandeau as a person of integrity, but I have the impression that she didn’t pay close attention to what was going on under her, behind her or around her,” he said.

Normandeau was bitten by the political bug early, studying political science at Université Laval and landing a summer internship in the office of late premier Robert Bourassa that turned into a four-year position. But at 25, homesick for the Gaspé, she chucked the job and moved back to Maria (pronounced “Mar-eye-ah” in English).

Régis Audet, the director of a local volunteer centre, worked with Normandeau in 1995, when she ran a food bank in a Victorian house occupied by local community groups.

“She was easy to work with. Nathalie is a very, very concrete girl,” he said.

“If a young family had financial difficulties and needed shoes for a child who was starting school, she’d call one or two organizations and by 4 p.m. we had whatever we needed,” he recalled.

At 27, Normandeau ran for mayor and won, campaigning door-to-door by bicycle.

“She loved to work, to do what she could to improve people’s quality of life, whether it was youth or senior citizens. She was always ready to listen to the needs of social organizations,” recalled Leblanc, 56, who has been town manager for 31 years.

“Very soon, you could see that the municipality was going to be a springboard. I could see she had enormous potential. I had no doubt it was just a matter of time before she made the jump into provincial or federal politics,” he added.

In 1998, Charest recruited the dynamic young mayor as Liberal candidate in Bonaventure, where she narrowly defeated Parti Québécois MNA Marcel Landry, a former minister of agriculture. She would win the next three elections by a landslide.

“People loved her — even her opponents,” said Gilles Gagné, news editor of the Gaspé Spec in New Carlisle and a freelance correspondent for Le Soleil.

“She was polite. She was respectful. She had that political sense: she remembered people’s names, where they worked, the names of their kids,” he said.

But in some ways, Normandeau was more of a follower than a leader, he recalled. When environmental groups asked her to support their fight against a toxic-soil incinerator in Belledune, N.B., she assured them, “I’m behind you.”

“They said, ‘We don’t want you behind us, we want you in front of us.’ That portrayed her attitude,” Gagné said.

When the Liberals returned to power in 2003, Normandeau was named minister for tourism and regional development. She soon became a rising star in the cabinet, promoted to municipal affairs in 2005 and becoming natural resources minister in 2009. She was Charest’s deputy premier from 2007 until her resignation.

Normandeau is remembered for cutting short her vacation to aid flood victims in Gaspé in 2007 and promoting economic development in the region, hard hit by job losses in the pulp and paper, sawmill and fishing industries.

“Those were the good years of public investment in infrastructure, with the development of the wind industry, highway construction and the upgrading of water-supply systems,” Leblanc said.

But as natural resources minister, she faced public outrage for the government’s stance in favour of shale-gas exploration and was ridiculed in 2011 for telling reporters that a cow emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than a shale gas well.

Meanwhile, allegations of political corruption and collusion in the construction industry were putting the Charest government on the defensive. In March 2010, the Radio-Canada investigative program Enquête revealed that engineering company Dessau had organized a fundraiser for Normandeau in 2008 that raised $43,000.

Normandeau defended the event. “It’s a way to give me a tap on the shoulder to say, ‘Listen, we are very proud of the work you are doing,’ ” she told reporters. “ ‘There are people who believe in Nathalie Normandeau.’ ”

As opposition demands for a public inquiry into corruption mounted, Normandeau lashed out against Charest’s critics. “The politician with a soft voice and beguiling smile has been transformed into a tough hell-hound,” wrote Journal de Montréal columnist J. Jacques Samson. In September 2010, she demanded an apology from Maclean’s magazine for a cover story calling Quebec the most corrupt province in Canada.

Normandeau also attracted unwelcome notoriety over her romantic relationships with an opposition MNA, François Bonnardel of the Action démocratique du Québec, and later with former Montreal police chief Yvan Delorme.

In the months leading up to her resignation on Sept. 6, 2011, she appeared increasingly stressed and thin. In July 2011, she fainted at a funeral for a local soldier killed in Afghanistan.

But the worst was yet to come. In October 2012, Zambito, charged in 2011 with corruption and fraud in connection with a water-treatment plant in Boisbriand to which Normandeau had awarded an $11-million subsidy, made his bombshell revelations at the Charbonneau Commission. He recounted that in addition to sending Normandeau flowers and concert tickets, he also helped organize fundraising dinners for her from 2006-2009.

Under Quebec’s electoral law, companies were barred from donating to campaigns and donations by individuals were limited to $3,000. Zambito described how engineering and construction companies got around the rules by asking friends, relatives and employees to make donations that were later reimbursed by the companies.

In a statement, Normandeau said she was never influenced by Zambito’s gifts and denied knowledge of illegal fundraising.

“I will not let anyone call into question my integrity,” she said. In an interview, she said she did not usually attend such events. “But come on, it was Céline Dion.”

But search warrants for a raid of Liberal headquarters in July 2013 made public in November show the ongoing police investigation was focusing on Normandeau’s fundraising activities and the subsidy for the Boisbriand water plant, which she approved against the advice of civil servants in her department.

And there was more. The warrants also revealed that Normandeau’s chief of staff from 2003-2009, Bruno Lortie, was co-operating with police and had turned over USB keys and CD-ROMs of Normandeau’s agenda to the UPAC anti-corruption squad. Lortie, a veteran Liberal organizer whose name came up at the 2005 Gomery Commission into the federal sponsorship scandal in connection with alleged illegal campaign donations, was an aide to former Liberal minister Marc-Yvan Côté from 1987 to 1994. Côté later joined the Roche engineering firm, which is alleged to have organized fundraising events for Normandeau.

On Nov. 15, Normandeau stepped down from her job as vice-president of strategic development at Montreal accounting firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton “by mutual agreement” after the search warrants were made public.

Still, many in Normandeau’s home region are giving her the benefit of the doubt.

“Sometimes, people who go into (politics) are ordinary people, who want to represent their riding,” Audet said.

“Maybe you get bad advice, or maybe there’s a lack of communication with your political aides or your chief of staff. At the end of the day, it’s easy to become a victim. Before you know it, you’re a scapegoat,” he said.

“She’s a girl we were proud of in this village. She started out as village mayor, she campaigned on her bicycle. From one day to the next she became MNA and she went on to be the vice-premier of Quebec. You say to yourself, ‘Wow, that girl really went far.’ ”